


Left Alone In No Man's Land

by letitrainathousandflames



Series: Clone Trooper Files [5]
Category: Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Blood and Gore, Bombing, Character Death, Dehumanization, Mutilation, Other, War
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-24
Updated: 2018-01-24
Packaged: 2019-03-09 02:11:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,490
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13471491
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/letitrainathousandflames/pseuds/letitrainathousandflames
Summary: Cut Lawquane told Captain Rex only a bit of his reasons to leave the Republic's Army. This is the story of what truly happened as he fought with his men in Rhyloth, under the charge of Captain Keeli and General Ima-Gun Di.





	Left Alone In No Man's Land

**Author's Note:**

> Death, blood, gore, mutilation, vomiting and war themes. Read at your own discretion.

Cut is still shooting non-stop. His finger is numb over the trigger, pulling it over and over again. The droids don’t stop coming. He sees the menacing wave of bigger, darker ones inbound. Commando droids, more than he can possibly count.

Cut looks back to his platoon of shinies. Nine year olds, fresh out of Kamino, trusted to General Di and his own command, as he was a sergeant. He can’t fail them, he can’t fail the Republic. This fight is theirs, and theyhave to win.

“Chestnut, Dell, Oliver, Pine, on me!” he orders, giving cover fire to his brothers “We need to keep moving, if we stand still, we’re all gonna die!” he screams at his comlink “Mal, bring your men to my side of the canyon, the clankers are trying to surround us!”

The voice through his comlink was cut off by static, but he could hear the sergeant’s voice and his ragged breathing. Cut knows the tone in his voice; it’s unbashed, unrestrained fear.

“My men--” the gunfire is loud on the speakers inside Cut’s helmet “--dead, Cut--only my and Gil--they’re too many—the general, protect the general--”

Cut squints ahead, still covering for his men until the last shiny passes through to the safety of a large rock to be used as cover. He can see sergeant Mal and the shiny Gil trying to sustain their fight, surrounded by droids. As he slowly retreats to cover, he sees the blaster shot piercing through Gil. The kid was nine and a half. Used to dream of being a sergeant like Mal. Sergeant Mal screams his lungs out in grief and rage, firing non-stop at the droids, and they keep advancing and firing, trampling over the corpses of Mal’s troopers. A blaster bolt strikes him on the chest, then another, and Mal drops to his knees, snarling, and Cut’s comlink goes silent after that.

Cut presses his armored back against the rock, trying to ground himself. Okay. Okay. He can do this. He hears a shiny sniffle. Karking hells. They’re too young for this, too young to die. It never crosses Cut’s mind that he, too, is too young to die. He need to protect these men, and he’ll do everything he can. He raises his helmeted face and sees a clear path ahead, easy to run, escape, save them and himself from a gruesome death like Mal and Gil’s. He slaps his head over the helmet. No. This was treason. He had a duty, he had to make a run to the General and protect him and his Captain. He pulls his bucket off, looking at his men in their white, shiny helmets.

“Troopers!” he barks at them, and he can see them shaking with their blasters in hand “We are going to make a run for the general that way” he points at the silhouettes of General Di and his men, the best of their legion, all of them still standing their ground with undying bravery “And we will protect him! This is what you trained for all your lives! This is for the Republic!”

His men nod back at him.

“For the Republic!”

Cut places his helmet back on his head and tries to pretend he can’t hear the hesitance in their voices, or see the dark stain of wetness over the visible part of their crotch over the blacks between the armor plates of a couple of them. They’re pissing themselves, shaking, terrified and certain that they’re not going to see tomorrow’s sunrise.

Well, it’s up to Cut to make sure they do.

He cocks his blaster, getting on one knee and peeking over the edge of the rock. A blaster shot breaks over it, sending small bits of debris everywhere and almost blowing Cut’s kriffing head with it.

“Okay, they see us.” He looks over his shoulder “I want you to run and fire as fast as you can to the next cover. Can you do this, troopers?” they give him the affirmative. One of them is still sniffling “Very well. On my sign. One. Two. Three. Go! Run!”

Cut gets up to his feet, darting ahead and firing to their flank. He can hear his troopers following, and the gunfire muffled by his helmet, his shallow breath so hard his visor gets hazy. He keeps running, almost reaching the next broad rock ahead.

He hears a blaster shot hitting its target, and a loud scream behind him, he slows down, still firing back. A shiny has dropped down, smoke coming out of his arm piece. Another one tries to get back to him, reaches for his arm; the next bolt cracks through the injured trooper’s helmet and his skull underneath it, and Cut pulls the other one by his back piece.

“He gone! Run!” he pushes the shinies ahead of him, and after what seems an eternity, they reach the cover. The blaster shots remain unrelenting against it.

Cut can barely breathe through the filters. He can distinctively smell the burned plastoid and scorched flesh. He doesn’t look back to the dead trooper. He can’t bear to. One of the remaining soldiers sobs and wails. That was his batch brother, and Cut knows the feeling of loss; all his batch brothers were dead. Cut grabs the kid by his arms and shakes him.

“Pine. Pine, listen to me. Listen to me!” he grabs him by his helmet on a firm grip “Dell is gone, kid. He’s gone. We need to reach the General.”

“I-I can’t!” Pine sobs, and it’s kriffing heartbreaking “I can’t, can’t do this, I can’t, sir!”

Cut swallows down, nodding.

“I know, but look. After we survive” not _if_ , never _if_ “you’re gonna face a lot of tough stuff like that. And you’re gonna have to be strong. This is how we honor our fallen brothers, hm? Surviving. Do you get this?”

Pine sobs again. Cut runs his hand over his white helmet like a father ruffling his son’s hair.

“C’mon now, on your feet. We need to move.” He turns to another trooper “Oliver, if anything happens to me, you are in charge of your brothers, do you copy?”

Oliver nods, almost getting hold of his shaking. He’s always been the most mature of this batch, had the highest scores and the best reputation amongst his brothers. Cut hopes – knows – he will survive this mess, but if he doesn’t, Oliver will be a fine replacement for him.

Replacement. We are things. When did I come to terms with this?

“Sir!” Chestnut screams, looking ahead “Sir, the general’s troop is being outmanned!”

Cut looks where he’s pointing and he sees the gunfire and the explosions while Captain Keeli and General Di try their best along their men to stand their ground.

The ground.

The ground is littered with dead troopers. All Cut can see are white-and-burgundy coded armors everywhere, blackened by explosions, melted by blaster fire, slathered with blood. His guts twist and turn in his ribs and he clutches his stomach.

No. They can do this. For the Republic.

(to whom they are things)

For the Jedi.

(to whom they are human shields)

 For their honor.

(the only thing they have)

Cut gets to his feet, breathing hard, trying not to think of the smell of blood and piss, trying not to hear the begging of mortally injured men around them.

“Follow me. We’ll bolt up to the General” _so that he can protect us with his lightsaber_ , he thinks, finally allowing his increasing hopelessness to take over “so that we can defend our last position. Aid is coming, troopers. We’ll survive this.”

So they run. The droid surrounding them fires on sight, and Cut returns fire, killing two, five, ten clankers in a row. He’s almost reaching the general, almost there. The time his brain takes to recognize the thermal detonator landing close to his feet is still longer than what it takes for a pair of hands to push him away from the blast’s range.

Brights lights of yellow and red, blinding even through his dark visors—

The heavy impact as he falls on his arm, screaming at the pain of what he’s certain to be crushing bones—

A blast so loud it tramples the filters in his helmet, turning to a long, endless ringing—

The heat, making him sweat and almost believe he’s on fire—

Then the sounds start to reach his ears again, muffled away like he’s underwater. Pine screaming something about the Republic under the sound of blaster fire, his voice braver than Cut have ever heard it. Oliver screaming Pine’s name in despair. Someone tearing Cut’s helmet out of his head.

“—alive? Sir, talk to me!”

Cut blinks and Chestnut’s face gets into focus over his. The blaster fire is still deafening around them, making it all even harder for Cut to hear him. The shiny gives him a pained smile, and Cut feels something wet hit his face. Then he notices how much Chestnut’s nose and mouth are bleeding.

“Oliver’s really something.” He says in an amused tone that is absurdly dislocated in the gruesome setting, and he kriffing laughs “Pushed you out so fast, it was like he was flying!”

It takes a few instants for Cut to understand that the kid’s _in shock._ Cut tries to reach up for Chestnut, to make him goddamn duck down before a stray blast hits him, but the shiny’s just laughing like a cadet on his name day.

“Well, he did fly!” Chestnut continued as he still laughed pointing ahead “Look there, he flew aaall the way up and landed like an old rusty ship!”

Despite the droid’s gunfire that kept hit their brothers close to them one by one, Cut raised his head – ears ringing, his entire body hurting, his goddamn arm stinging with pain, most likely shattered in at least three different places – and he sees him. Oliver. Half of him, however – his legs go down to his mid-thighs and then there’s just a pool of blood and mutilated flesh exposed under scorched, formerly white armor. His arm is outstretched in an attempt to reach for Pine, whose helmet’s been knocked out of his head somehow, and Cut can see his eyes, wide open and seeming to be made of glass, looking nowhere. He’s dead.

The ragged grunt pulls Cut out of his shock, plunging him into another wave of terror. Stars, Oliver’s still alive. The shiny moves trying to get up, more blood pooling under what’s left of his legs. A droid approaches him and Oliver is grunting and spitting blood, trying to reach his blaster—

The droid shoots Oliver in the head. In their shared shock, neither Cut nor Chestnut react with more than wide eyes and a hitch on their breath. Cut manages to find his voice in the back of his throat as he scrambles to reach for the spare blaster in his holster.

“Run, Chestnut! Run!” he screams “Run!” Chestnut gets to his feet, looking over to Keeli and General Di “No, not to them! Run away!” and Cut finally understands that orders don’t matter, honor doesn’t matter, the only thing that matters is staying alive and keeping the last shiny under his command alive “They can’t fight it! We can’t fight it! Just run!”

Chestnut looks down to Cut in bewilderment, and Cut struggles to sit up on his only good arm, the one holding his blaster.

“Go!” he roars “Go now! I’ll cover for you, just run, kid! Survive!”

So Chestnut gets up to his feet, stumbling back on wobbly knees. There’s blood oozing from between the plates on his torso, and Cut’s pretty sure he won’t survive even if he reaches a ship or a medic anywhere. The droid raises its inexpressive metal face to Cut, and the sergeant opens fire once, twice, and then is saved by a blaster shot deflected by General Di’s lightsaber that cuts right through its neck. Cut smiles, and he looks farther ahead, where Chestnut still runs when a commando droid guns him down mercilessly. Cut yells as he sees Chestnut dropping to his knees, and even in the deafening gunfire he can hear the kid _cackling_ as he faces his death, and the droid shoots him again in the head over is helmet.

Cut can’t get to his feet. His entire body is in unspeakable pain. He looks over to the General and sees both Keeli and Di fighting to their last men. That’s when a blaster shot hits Keeli on his chest once. Then again. Then a third time, and Keeli, seeming to be dead but still standing since the first shot had hit him finally drops down.

Cut sees General Di look down at him, getting distracted for a moment – gunfire strikes him on his shoulder – he stands his ground but there are too many commando droids – He fights to his last breath, deflecting enemy fire until it’s just too much, and he’s hit one more time, and another. When Di finally collapses, his lightsaber clattering to the ground, Cut doesn’t see the peace the Jedi claim to feel to be joined with the Force in his eyes. All he sees before they fall shut is pain and fear.

Then the ships cross the sky. Kenobi and Skywalker, finally arriving with reinforcements. All around him, the very injured survivors scream for help only to be silenced by blaster shots, executed without a chance to defend themselves. A bit closer to where Chestnut died Cut sees a trooper holding his brother’s hand and sobbing. He looks around to the overwhelming number of droids and pulls his helmet off with shaky hands, cocking his blaster and pressing it to his chin.

“No…” Cut whispers, shaking his head “NO!”

The trooper pulls the trigger and collapses down to the ground. Cut hesitates and then lies down, pretending to be dead. Chestnut’s blood on his face would surely help make him look like he was.

So he waits. Eyes closed, shallow breaths, screams and gunshots all around him. The scent of burned plastoid and blood unbearable, his hands clenched into fists so they’d stop shaking. After the conflict seems to draw away he opens his eyes again. The sky above is so blue, like the universe doesn’t give a damn about their lives. No one grieves. No one cries. What had Cut made of his life anyway, aside from slaving away for a republic that doesn’t care?

Over an hour and half later, he believes he’s heard silence for long enough. He raises his upper body, grunting at every move over his broken arm. The field is littered with corpses, droids’ and clones’, the latter in a much larger number than the first. Cut sits up, looking around at the scorched ground where bombs have landed and at the fallen lightsaber of their general. There’s no one around. He’s the last survivor. Cut clutches a hand over his stomach, turning to the side and bending down to then throw up, coughing. He spits and curses and a new wave of nausea hits him as he vomits once again. Wiping the corner of his mouth with his gloved hand, he stumbles up to his feet, shaking all over.

_My brothers are dead._

 He wipes Chestnut’s blood off his face and he looks around the vast field. The entire legion... Even their Jedi general…

_They gunned us down, all of us. Even the wounded ones who couldn’t fight anymore._

Cut licks his lips, and never, in a life lived surrounded by his brothers, sleeping on bunk beds and sharing a home in the GAR has he felt so alone. The tension in his muscles makes his eye and his lip twitch involuntarily. He can’t stand here any longer, not in this battlefield turned graveyard, or he’ll go insane.

_Haven’t I already?_

Where to go, then? The ships went south. He could follow their paths, report, give account of Captain Keeli and General Di’s brave sacrifice. He could. Cut swallows down, bitter taste of bile in his throat. _No. No, I’ve suffered enough._ He takes a hesitant step faced north, and he looks to Keeli’s lifeless body on the ground close to their General’s. He had almost died for the Republic. Now…

_Now I’ll live for myself._

Cut takes one step, then another, and it feels like he’s just stretching a long, rattling chain that ties him inescapably to the Republic. Yet he keeps walking, his legs feeling weak and his breath shallow. He pries his hand guards off of him, letting them fall to the ground, to the dirt. The teachings back in Kamino made him think of his armor as an extension of his soul.

 _But I died_ , he thinks as he loosens up his shoulder pads, leaving them behind as well, _and dead men have no souls._

“I reject your teachings” he says in a raspy voice as he lets his arm and forearm pieces fall down – and his comlink with it, the very last resource to back away from his decision – like a snake’s skin on its trail “I reject your symbols. I reject your fight.” He stops to rip off his shin and thigh guards and even his shoes; he keeps walking as he pries his codpiece off, leaving it all behind him “I reject all you’ve never gave me, for nothing was truly mine to begin with.”

He doesn’t know where the words are coming from. All he knows is that he speaks the truth in every sentence. And as he grabs his blaster and unclips his belt, letting it fall behind him as he shoves the weapon in the waist of his blacks and hiding it under his shirt, he says:

“And all I have from now on, all I can manage to take and make mine, I’ll protect it to my dying breath.”

* * *

Cut walks. And walks. The ground is rough and unforgiving, making his feet sore, blisters on his soles. When he finally reaches one of the many villages of the Twi’lek inhabited world, he ses a small, battered ship being boarded by no other than the Twi’leks. Cut rushes to them, swallowing down on his rough, dried throat.

“Wait!” he calls and a twi’lek woman who’s carrying an old blaster rifle about to be the last one to board the ship turns to him “Wait! Where are you going?!”

The woman raises the rifle to him.

“Who are you, outsider?” she asks. Her voice is strong, permeated by a heavy Rylothian accent

Cut doesn’t raise his hands. He just can’t fear guns anymore, not at that point.

“I’m…I’m a refugee.” he says “Are you… leaving?”

The woman slowly lowers her rifle.

“We’re not going to wait for the Republic’s aid. My people are placing the villagers in ships to seek shelter somewhere else. Rhyloth is doomed.”

It isn’t. Supplies have just arrived.

“You’re right.” Cut says “I’m trying to escape too. Do you have room for one more passenger?”

The woman raises her chin. Cut had never heard that Twi’leks could have such a stunning shade of pink to their skins.

“We are packed.” she says “Overcapacitated.”

Cut almost reaches for his blaster. He can take over the ship, take over this bunch of farmers, women and children, it would be easy. He hesitates. No. He can’t do it. These people are like him and his brothers. They just want to survive.

“I see. Very well then.”

He turns to keep walking, trying to come up with a plan before the other troopers reach this area. The woman speaks again.

“That’s why, you see, it doesn’t matter to have one more passenger.” Cut turns to her and she gives him a half-smile “Just don’t complain if something goes wrong and we don’t have enough escape pods.”

Cut lets out a sharp laugh and nods.

“I wouldn’t dare, ma’am.”

He walks into the ship beside the woman, and she places the gun on her back, tied to a leather strap over her chest. She looks to Cut, tossing a lekku over her shoulder as the engines rumble and the ship ascends slowly towards the sky above.

“You don’t look so well sir. You’re shaking.” the woman speaks to Cut and then says something in twi’lek to another woman beside her; the other tosses a blanket to her, and the woman throws it over Cut’s shoulder “What’s your name?”

Cut swallows hard at the feeling of the woman’s warm hand over his back. His lips quiver and he blinks, trying not to cry.

“Cut…” he nods a few times “My name is Cut.”

The woman waits in silence, like she expects Cut to give her a last name, but he just swallows again. She pats him on his back.

“Nice to meet you, Cut. My name is Suu. Suu Lawquane.”


End file.
